UAE Mushroom Farm | Below Farm

MUSHROOM FARMING DESIGNED FOR THE DESERT

Mushrooms aren't known for growing in hot, dry climates. But, at Below Farm, we’ve found how to make them thrive in the desert, using locally available materials. So you can enjoy exceptional mushrooms without the food miles.

HOW THREE CORPORATE LADDER CLIMBERS BECAME DESERT MUSHROOM FARMERS

In 2020, Wojciech, Liliana and Bronte were three frustrated mushroom-loving expats working our corporate Dubai jobs, making do with bland button mushrooms or expensive imports, heavy with food miles and past their best.
But we dreamed of (and drooled over) the earthy pleasures of harvest-fresh mushrooms. The kind we dragged ourselves out of bed at dawn to forage in the damp, cold forests of our Polish and English childhoods.
Then Wojciech had an idea: why not grow the mushrooms of our dreams here in the UAE? Because it’s a dry, hot, sandy desert with no dark leafy forests?
You’re right. So thank goodness for ingenuity, stubbornness and a touch of madness …
It turns out when an electrical engineer, a business development expert and a chemist put their mushroom-loving heads together, incredible things happen. Like creating the first farm growing speciality fungi in the desert…

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OUR RECIPE FOR GROWING HAPPY MUSHROOMS IN THE DESERT

Temperature
Humidity
Light
Air Composition

Whether you’re in the forests of Poland or the deserts of the UAE, the secret of delicious mushrooms is the right mix of these four ingredients.

So, at Below Farm, we experimented and tweaked - and found a way to keep them in perfect balance.

How? By growing our mushrooms in insulated tunnels. Inside, an automated system of mind-bending algorithms maintains the ideal environment for each of our speciality varieties.

"I miss foraging for mushrooms so this is the next best thing."

- DARREN

HOW WE KEEP THE PLANET HAPPY TOO...

At Below Farm, we stay true to our original dream - bringing you world-class mushrooms and mushroomy products without the heavy environmental toll of imports.

In 2023, the World Economic Forum’s Circular Accelerator program hailed our sustainable efforts, naming us a Top Innovator in the waste-recycling ‘circular’ economy.

As nature’s decomposers, mushrooms are the ideal circular crop. We raise them from spore, then grow them on a ‘soil’ made from discarded date palms, old coffee grounds and other waste destined for the rubbish heap.

Once it’s brought you nutritious and delicious mushrooms, the decomposed soil substrate continues its journey, becoming compost or animal feed …

That’s not the only way mushrooms help our sustainable efforts. With water scarcity a big deal in the desert, their minimal demands make them a low-impact crop.

And we keep that environmental impact low in other ways too ...

In our sterile grow rooms, fertilisers and pesticides are a no-no. And we stack our grow bags on shelves seven layers high, so our mushrooms take up little space and use none of the UAE’s limited arable land.

With our trailblazing methods, we can grow our mushrooms anywhere while treading lightly on the Earth.

Even in the desert.

And we can promise you happy, planet-friendly fungi all year round.